Chicago's Mayor Expands RTW Program
Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced it as part of a package of actions saving $75 million from the city's FY2011 budget. Sixty injured city workers will be brought back on light duty.
May 17 was Mayor Rahm Emanuel's first full day in office, and he announced several actions that will save a combined $75 million from the city's budget for fiscal 2011. One of them, saving $500,000, is an expanded return-to-work program that will bring 60 injured city employees back on the job in less physically demanding roles.
Emanuel, 51, was elected on Feb. 22, 2011, and sworn in on May 16. He succeeded Richard M. Daley, who served from 1989 to 2011 and is the eldest son of the city's legendary mayor, the late Richard J. Daley.
On May 24, Emanuel announced that 500 Chicago Police Department officers were being redeployed to patrol work in the Second City. "Without the security and safety of our streets we cannot have successful, thriving communities where people want to live and stay," he said. "Successful policing begins with the beat officers who earn the trust of the communities they serve, shift by shift and patrol by patrol. This is a down payment on my promise to add 1,000 police officers to the beat. We cannot beat crime without more officers on the beat."
He announced it at the department's 6th Police District Headquarters in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood and was joined by acting Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Felicia Davis, Emanuel's first deputy chief of staff and a former Chicago police officer. The 500 officers, coming mainly from the department's Mobile Strike Force and Targeted Response Unit, will be patrolling their new beats by May 29.